Blog Traffic

June 1, 2014

"Death penalty in Kansas: Will the state ever execute another prisoner?"

The title of this post is the headline of this lengthy article in the Lawrence Journal World. And though focused on the modern story of capital administration in the Sunflower State, there are likely at least a dozen other states which still have the death penalty on the books and a number of prisoners on death row (ranging from California to Pennsylvania, from North Carolina to Washington) for which the same question could be reasonably asked given the lack of execution in these states for more than half a decade. Here are excerpts abut the modern capital story in Kansas that is similar (though with distinct facets) to what happen in a number of states :

Moments before he was hung to death, George York expressed contrition for his sins....

The state of Kansas had not forgiven York, convicting him of one of several murders he had confessed to as part of a cross-country killing spree with fellow Army deserter James Latham. So on June 22, 1965, York was led up the 13 steps of the gallows at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. A prison chaplain read from the 23rd Psalm as the noose was placed around York's neck. At 12:53 a.m., the trap door dropped. The 22-year-old was pronounced dead 19 minutes later.

York was the last person executed by the state of Kansas. In recent years, several states have banned capital punishment. It is on hiatus in some states because of problems obtaining the drugs used in lethal injections, which has led to botched executions, mostly recently in Oklahoma. But in Kansas, the death penalty is in a sort of legal limbo: still on the books, just not being carried out.

There have been no executions in the 20 years since the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas, due, observers say, to an exhaustive appeals process, a cautious state Supreme Court dealing with a fairly new and restrictive law, and the state's relatively low murder rate. Nine men are currently on death row in Kansas.

Only two other states besides Kansas — Nebraska and California — have a lethal injection chamber that has never been used. The only death penalty state that has gone longer without an execution is New Hampshire, which last killed a prisoner in 1939 and has only one person on death row. Kansas doesn't even have lethal injection drugs in stock because a possible execution is so far in the future....

Earlier this year, the Kansas legislature debated a bill that proponents said would speed up the appeals process in capital cases. The legislation didn't pass. One of its supporters, state Sen. Greg Smith, R-Olathe, was asked why there have been no executions in Kansas in recent years. "Four words: the Kansas Supreme Court," he said. "It's not that we don't use the death penalty in Kansas. It's that the Kansas Supreme Court refuses to apply the law and allow a lawful sentence to be carried out."

Smith, whose daughter was murdered in Missouri in 2007, refuses to name death row inmates, instead invoking the names of victims when discussing cases. "What we tend to forget is the people who do this had zero mercy for the people they killed," he said. "The people who are murdered go through hell. After they're murdered, we forget about the victim. People say, let's not be inhumane, but what about the people they killed?" He said the drawn-out appeals process puts families of victims "right back into that emotional mess they were in when they loved ones were killed."

The state's top prosecutor, Attorney General Derek Schmidt, also supported the changes, saying the Supreme Court should review only the sentencing rather than the whole case and that defendants' ability to file successive, unnecessary motions clogs up the appellate system. "Attorney General Schmidt has a long record of supporting Kansas’ narrowly tailored death penalty," said his spokesman, Clint Baes. "In addition, our office this year supported a legislative proposal which would have held the courts accountable to their own procedural rules. A lack of adherence to these rules by our appellate courts has led to the long delays in death penalty appeals."

The state Supreme Court not only declared Kansas' death penalty statute unconstitutional in 2004 (a decision later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court), it has overturned the death sentences in all five of the modern capital cases it has issued opinions on....

Some legal experts say the Supreme Court takes so much time reviewing death penalty cases because the law in its current form has only existed for 20 years....

Jeffrey Jackson, a Lawrence attorney and law professor at Washburn University, said he believes that the death penalty statute has a deterrent effect. The state's murder rate has declined since capital punishment was reinstated, from 170 in 1994 to 84 in 2012, though that mirrors a similar drop in homicides across the country.

He also noted that as the state Supreme Court continues to work through the issues surrounding Kansas' death penalty statute, the appeals process will likely quicken. "Unless the Legislature repeals the death penalty, I think there will eventually be an execution," he said. (A recent bill to abolish capital punishment in Kansas would not have applied to the nine men already on death row). "The more cases you have, the better the judges get at figuring out how to do these things. They're still going to take a lot of time, but it's not going to increase. It's almost assured that we will have an execution as long as the statute is in place."

That execution, if it comes, probably won't be happening in the near future. Even if the Kansas' high court affirms a death sentence, it will then have make its way through the federal appeals system. "The death penalty is by far the most complex set of laws there could be in criminal law," said Ron Wurtz, the former chief of the state's Death Penalty Defense Unit, who doesn't see a Kansas inmate being put to death anytime soon. "It's not even close right now. I'd say it's probably 10 more years out, at the very least."

Comments

The entire death penalty appellate business is based on lawyer made up fictitious concepts, none coming from the constitution, all coming from the feelings of lawyer with a irremediable conflict of interest. Drop crime, drop procedures, drop lawyer jobs. There is nothing they can say that carries objective validation. Every one of their doctrine may be rebutted by high school social studies knowledge. The charade is a bunko operation to plunder the tax payer.

The lawyers are organized into a tightly run, highly disciplined criminal cult enterprise. The victims are not organized at all. Victims should organize into direct action cells, and attack the hierarchy of the cult enterprise, physically. It has to be physically because there is no legal recourse. The cult has infiltrated the three branches of government, and fully controls its policy making apparatus.

The cult does sometimes bend, as it did with mandatory guidelines, to appease the seething rage of the public at the high crime rate of the 1970's and 1980's. The anti-crime goal is achieved, but so is lawyer serious unemployment. So it takes these back, without legislative consideration.

The fight against this criminal cult should start with a full boycott by all service and product providers.

The Kansas and Oregon Supreme Courts are similar. Oregon has affirmed a few on direct appeal but none has made it past postconviction. Like the article stated, none have been affirmed in Kansas on direct appeal. It has a very simple answer. Despite the passage of Legislation and public support, the members of the two courts just don't like the death penalty.

Reminds me of the Bird court in California years ago.

Posted by: DaveP | Jun 1, 2014 4:52:25 PM

Post a comment

In the body of your email, please indicate if you are a professor, student, prosecutor, defense attorney, etc. so I can gain a sense of who is reading my blog. Thank you, DAB